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I have an Intel S5520SC motherboard with two Intel Xeon E5620 CPUs installed. It currently has six KVR13R9D4/8I DIMMS - I want to add another six DIMMs (48GB of RAM) to upgrade this workstation to 96GB of RAM. Unfortunately, Kingston has discontinued those DIMMs. My supplier is telling me that KVR16R11S4/8I will work, but I'd just like to check before spending money on this.

Both DIMMS are 8GB, 1.5V power supply, ECC, registered, have 8 banks and use 4-bits per RAM chip. The differences are that the old RAM is 1333MHz and dual rank while the new RAM is 1600MHz and single rank. I don't see anything in the manual for the S5520SC that says mixing dual and single rank ECC RAM is allowed or not allowed.

Do I just have to make sure I don't mix single and dual rank DIMMs in the same channel? Should one CPU use the old RAM and the other the new RAM? Please advise. Thanks in advance.

stambata
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chippies
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    At worst just have your supplier confirm both their take on the compatibility and a money-back guarantee before ordering. – HBruijn Jul 29 '16 at 20:42
  • It's been difficult getting compatible RAM because this is a custom built workstation, normally they'd just look up what RAM they sell for a particular HP/Dell/etc. model. They say it is compatible with the installed RAM, but I wanted to check what other people's experiences have been - that's always easier than trying to return something once you find it isn't compatible. – chippies Jul 30 '16 at 18:21

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It did work, and it seems to be stable too. I now have six KVR13R9D4/8I DIMMs and six KVR16R11S4/8I DIMMs plugged into the same S5520SC motherboard. The KVR16R11S4/8I DIMMs were plugged into the second slot of each channel. The KVR13R9D4/8I DIMMs were already in the first slot of each of the six channels. One possible hint that this would have worked is that Kingston markets KVR16R11S4/8I as the replacement for KVR13R9D4/8I.

chippies
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I don't see anything in the manual for the S5520SC that says mixing dual and single rank ECC RAM is allowed.

Reading Manuals as a Service brought to you by the SF community - on page 24 of the first search result for the S5520SC manual:

3.3.2 Supported Memory

  • Intel® Workstation Board S5520SC supports up to 12 DDR3 DIMMs with 1.5 V and a maximum of 192 GB memory capacity.
  • Intel® Workstation Board S5520SC supports Registered DDR3 DIMMs (RDIMMs), and ECC Unbuffered DDR3 DIMMs (UDIMMs).
  • Mixing of RDIMMs and UDIMMs is not supported.
  • Mixing memory type, size, speed and/or rank on this platform has not been validated and is not supported
HBruijn
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    Not validated means Intel didn't test this scenario, and if it doesn't work don't go crying to them. It's not a case of "this does not work!" or "this is not allowed". That's why I asked for guidance. P.S. I did see that part of the manual - if my interpretation is wrong then let me know. – chippies Jul 30 '16 at 18:25